Although the making
and duplication of Gurbani-CD is controlled by Kulbir Singh Thind, MD; its
creation has been possible due to a selfless dedication of a number of
individuals.

It is worth mentioning
here that many individuals and organizations have been making their own efforts
to do similar projects and some have produced valuable results.

One such project
wasstarted many years ago by S. Jaswant Singh-ji, an engineer by
profession. He typed the text from Siri Guru Granth Sahib into the computer and
is thus the main architect of this project.

S. Jaswant Singh-ji
did most of the work of typing, initial proof reading and editing of the text of
Siri Guru Granth Sahib. S. Jagjit Singh Karwel helped in typing the text of many
hundreds of pages.

The most difficult
part of this project has been to eliminate all mistakes of text entry. That
required extensive proof reading, a task that may seem simple but is very
difficult and time consuming. Many dedicated individuals were helpful in this
regard. The names of those individuals are mentioned below.

1. Dr. Kulwant Singh-ji, who in
addition to being an ophthalmologist (a retired medical doctor) is also a Sikh
studies scholar and a writer of many books on Sikhism. His “Maansrovar” and some
other documents are included on Gurbani-CD. He did a commendable job of ‘full
proof-reading’ of the whole of Siri Guru Granth Sahib, twice. He also helped in
this project in many other ways as described later.

2. In addition to the correction work
done before, a very extensive correction work was done by Parminder Singh Aujla
of Hopewell Junction, New York, USA; before the 2nd proof reading by
Dr. Kulwant Singh.

3. Many other individuals helped in
proof-reading the typed text from Siri Guru Granth Sahib and many of them edited
it a number of times. Their names are: S. Jagdev Singh Beasley, Bibi Avtar Kaur
Beasley, Giani Amarjit Singh-ji, S. Rajinder Singh Dhaliwal, Bibi Surinder Kaur
Dhaliwal, S. Manjit Singh Sahota (with the help of his niece) and Bibi Khushdev
Kaur Thind.

4. The already proof-read files have
been further improved recently with cooperation from SGPC.

The text of Bhai
Gurdaas's Bannies has been typed by S. Maninderpal Singh and his other family
members in Delhi, India.

The text of Bhai
Gurdaas’ Vaars have also been independently typed according to SGPC publication
and proof read by Bhai Baljinder Singh of Rara Sahib Wale.

To achieve proper
appearance of the text from Siri Guru Granth Sahib on pages, many logical
formatting decisions had to be made. Dr. Kulbir Singh Thind, MD; was responsible
in this regard by utilizing his word processing & other computer related
technical skills. He was also responsible for all conversions of the text of
Gurbani related files to Devanagari (Hindi script) and its phonetic
transliteration (romanization). He has also converted Sri Guru Granth Sahib text
to Unicode Gurmukhi and Devanagari fonts that are based on the industry accepted
international standard. It is thankfully acknowledged that S. Piara Singh Bagri
& Satwinderjit Singh Bagri from Tracy, California, USA; made valuable
recommendations for improving conversion of SGGS text to Devanagari.

All the fonts on the
Gurbani-CD have been made by Dr. Kulbir Singh Thind, and are his copyright. He
has been making and distributing Gurmukhi fonts (free of charge) for many years.
His Gurmukhi type-faces, named “Amrit-Lipi” had a wide distribution. However,
Amrit-Lipi lacked some subscript characters (shown below) that were required to
correctly type text from Siri Guru Granth Sahib. Dr. Kulwant Singh-ji, did a
thorough search of Siri Guru Granth Sahib to list all such characters for Dr.
Thind, who then developed a new font for the purpose of writing Siri Guru Granth
Sahib and named it “Gurbani-Lipi”. This font was gradually perfected over time
and other similar fonts were also developed.

Following eleven characters previously
not found in the Amrit-Lipi were included in the “GurbaniLipi” and in all the
fonts that were developed subsequently.

Conversion of the text
of Siri Guru Granth Sahib from Gurmukhi to Hindi (during the earlier years)
required a customized Hindi font which was then developed. Some characters found
in Gurmukhi do not have equivalent characters in Hindi. Decision was made to
import those characters in the custom Hindi font.

On release of Windows
XP operating system, it became possible to use Unicode Gurmukhi and Devanagari
fonts based on the international standard. By this time other operating systems
have also made it possible to use Unicode Gurmukhi & Devanagari fonts. Dr.
Thind has thus developed Unicode Gurmukhi fonts.

Phonetic
transliteration (romanization) of Siri Guru Granth Sahib text in common English
characters has also been completed by Kulbir Singh Thind, MD. Prior to this
Conversion of Siri Guru Granth Sahib text to Roman was done with a different
approach, i.e., by making a specialized font. All the search and decision making
regarding the development of this font has been done by Kulbir Singh Thind who
then created the font and named it “GurbaniRomanizing”. Dr. Kulwant Singh-ji
made many suggestions for this font, a few of which were
incorporated.

Kulbir S. Thind has
also been responsible for making of "Sentence by Sentence SGGS text with Page
Line Raag Author labels" document. The text in this document is arranged in an
easy to use format for scholarly work. In this document each sentence from Siri
Guru Granth Sahib is arranged as a single line or in a few instances in double
line paragraphs. Each line/paragraph ends with the page number, line number,
Raag and Author for easy reference. This file has been further developed by
including Dr. Khalsa’s (see below) English translation underneath each line of
Gurmukhi text. Another file also includes sentence by sentence phonetic
transliteration done by Kulbir Singh Thind, MD.

Singh Sahib Sant Singh
Khalsa, MD, graciously gave his permission to record his English translation of
Siri Guru Granth Sahib on the Gurbani-CD. Users will find his work very
valuable. We are very thankful to Dr. Khalsa for his generosity.

An additional document
named “Translation Comparison” included on the Gurbani-CD is also compiled by
Dr. Khalsa and compares the five available English translations of Siri Guru
Granth Sahib.

"Sri Guru Granth
Darpan," Gurmukhi text to Punjabi (Gurmukhi) translation of all of Sri Guru
Granth Sahib by Professor Sahib Singh is included since version 2002 of the
Gurbani-CD. The work of getting it typed into computer has been spearheaded by
S. Avtar Singh & Davinder Kaur Dhami, 3336 Bridge Road Hayward, CA 94545,
USA; who got the text typed in Amritsar, India and also paid for this task. This
is all done with permission from Dr. Daljit Singh, M.B.B.S, M.S., Amritsar,
India. On the internet "Sri Guru Granth Darpan" is available at
http://www.gurugranthdarpan.com. Thanks to Dhami family & Dr. Daljit Singh.
Dr. Thind formatted the typed text of “Sri Guru Granth Darpan” for use on the
computer and on the internet.

S. Kirpal Singh Pannu
of Ontario, Canada; who has been providing many coputer related linguistic
services to Punjabi writers for many years has been helpful in converting Sri
Guru Granth Sahib text into Shahmukhi (Urdu) and those files are made available
on the Gurbani-CD. Many thanks to him.

S. Manjit Singh Sahota
of San Jose, California, a computer professional, has been kind enough to
contribute to the Gurbani-CD by creating (1) "All Words List" from Siri Guru
Granth Sahib files (2) a “Word Index” file that indexes all words from SGGS
(Siri Guru Granth Sahib) with page and line numbers (3) a “sorting” program to
help users sort lines of text written with GurbaniLipi according to the Gurmukhi
alphabet and (4) by sorting the “Alphabetized Sentence by Sentence SGGS Text”
file according to the Gurmukhi alphabet. The sorting program created by S.
Manjit Singh Sahota works under Windows 95/98 DOS and can sort up to 2000 lines
of text. S. Manjit Singh Sahota has also been helpful in many other ways. He
deserves numerous thanks.

Mr. Jasjeet Singh
Thind, a computer software engineer, was very helpful (at that time he was a
student at Cornell University) in remaking of “All Words from Siri Guru Granth
Sahib” files and “Index of All Words in Siri Guru Granth Sahib” files. He did a
perfect job. This work needed to be done again for following reasons: Since the
making of the original “All Words List” and “Word Index”, the Siri Guru Granth
Sahib files had been perfected for spellings and it was time to make new “All
Words” list and “Index” files that reflect necessary changes (also some
omissions regarding page & line references were discovered in the previous
Index). Regarding Sikh scriptures, Jasjeet Singh Thind has also contributed in
another big way, by making a web search engine available at
http://www.srigranth.org.

The documents in the
“PSSG Trust” folder on the Gurbani-CD are included by the courtesy of Professor
Sahib Singh Gurmat Trust and have been spearheaded with the labor of love by Dr.
Gurcharan Singh, Ph.D., Academy of Sikh Religion & Culture, 1 Dhillon Marag,
Patiala 147001, India. The names of other individuals associated with these
documents are described in the leading pages of the documents. Dr. Gurcharan
Singh’s publications "SGGS Kosh", "Tuk Tatkara", “Haumai”& “Nadir” are
included on the Gurbani-CD. Dr. Gurcharan Singh is a distinguished scholar of
Sikhism who has devoted many years of hard labor in producing many Sikhism
related reference materials. His latest addition is a marvelous dictionary
(Gurmukhi to Gurmukhi Kosh) of Sri Guru Granth Sahib. This is not just a repeat
of what has been done before but an honest update of all similar work ever
produced before. In this document, a citation for each meaning is provided with
text from Sri Guru Granth Sahib. My heartfelt thanks to him for choosing
Gurbani-CD a medium for making some of his reference materials available to
Gurbani-CD users without any financial gain.

Bhai Baljinder
Singh
of Rara Sahib
Wale,
(16914 Lassen Street,
Northridge, CA 91343, USA) who preaches the
teachings of Sikhism all over the world, as expounded by Sant Isher Singh ji;
has been working for a number of years to make the important Sikhism literature
resources available for use on the computer. He has thus been responsible for
getting important Gurbani texts typed into the computer, the ones that were not
already done. He has been instrumental in creating Gurbani Search Software named
Isher Micromedia Software. This search tool can search text of Sri Guru Granth
Sahib and Vaars/Kabits Bhai Gurdas ji in a hurry. Besides this, he has provided
the basic and detailed source material about Gurbani, Sikhism & Sikh
History. This is being offered free of cost as a humble service to the Sikh
Community worldwide. Bhai Baljinder Singh started the project of getting
Mahankosh by Bhai Kahan Singh ‘Nabha’ typed into the computer in 1996 and it got
completed in 1998. Mahankosh was then made available for downloading at http://www.rarasahib.com and then at http://www.ik13.com . A pdf file of
MahanKosh is also included on the Gurbani-CD. Many other files relating to Sikh
literature that are prepared by Bhai Baljinder Singh-ji are also included on the
Gurbani-CD inside the folder “9 Files by Bhai Baljinder Singh”. He rightfully
deserves thanks from the users of his files and search-engine
software.

All the scanned images
inside the “Photos by Nirmal Dhesi” folder have become available on the
Gurbani-CD courtesy of Nirmal Singh Dhesi, Professor Emeritus, Department of
English, State University, Sonoma, California. Professor Dhesi made many
photographic slides of historic Gurdwaras and of associated art work in 1980s.
His photographic work is very professional. Upon request from Dr. Thind,
Professor Dhesi made those slides available for scanning for inclusion of his
valuable work on the Gurbani-CD with a condition that the scanned images be not
used by anyone for any publication or commercial exploitation. Dr. Thind is
happy to scan those slides and make those available for viewing purposes.
Professor Dhesi deserves many thanks for this generous contribution.

Many a photographs in
the "Gurdwara Photos" folder are provided by Rajinder Singh Dhaliwal from
Fishkil, New York. Thanks to him.

Permission has also
been obtained from “Sikh Missionary Center, PO BOX 62521, Phoenix, Arizona
85082” to include on the Gurbani-CD an approximately 263 page document on “Sikh
Religion” written in English. The Sikh Missionary Center (responsible
individual: S. Jaswant Singh) deserves sincere thanks.

We are thankful to Dr.
Harbans Lal Ph.D., who has retired as Chairman of Department of Pharmacology,
University of North Texas, and the founder of ‘Academy of Guru Granth Studies’
for providing moral support and for his participation in some decision making
processes, in the initial stages of the making of Gurbani-CD.

The documents in the
“Gahir, Avtar” folder on the Gurbani-CD have been formatted with the labor of
love by: Avtar Singh Gahir, President, Kingston Sikh Cultural Society, Ontario,
CANADA. Thanks to him for his contribution.

The document “Ardaas”
inside the folder “Randhawa, Joginder” on the Gurbani-CD has been written by:
Dr. Jogindar Singh Randhawa, MBBS, England, UK. Thanks to him for his
contribution.

No funds were ever
collected for the completion of this project. All individuals who helped in the
project did it with the understanding that this was a free “Sewa” (voluntary
service) and that the project was a non-commercial one for “Sewa” (community
service) only.

Many other individuals
including a number of friends and relatives of Sewadars (volunteers) have
offered their support and help for the completion of the project and deserve
thanks.

When the distribution
of the Gurbani-CDs was started in Nov. 95, we expected to distribute only a few
hundred of these. However, the experience proved otherwise. By the end of
February 96, we had already recorded (at home) and distributed more than 550 of
Gurbani-CDs and the demand seemed to be increasing. By then it became obvious
that the distribution of Gurbani-CDs by recording at home was not an efficient
method for the given demand. Subsequently, many thousands of professionally made
Gurbani-CDs have been distributed and over the years a number of different
versions of Gurbani-CDs have been released.

Dr. Tarlochan Singh of
the Sikh Center of Orange County (a Gurdwara in Southern California) was very
enthused about the Gurbani-CD. The Sikh Center has contributed significantly
towards the manufacture of compressed CDs and offered its services for the
distribution of the Gurbani-CDs. It may be noted that subsequently the name of
the organization involved in the distribution of Gurbani-CDs has changed to
"Shri Guru Granth Sahib Foundation, Inc." Thanks to Dr. Tarlochan Singh and
other involved in this service, especially Bickey Singh. However, currently Dr.
Tarlochan Singh and Bickey Singh are not active in the distribution of
Gurbani-CDs.

Dr. Thind is
personally indebted to the following individuals who provided their support
during early days of the making of the Gurbani-CDs by supplying significant
number of recordable CDs and helping in the distribution: Dr. Gurpal Singh
Bhuller, MD, Virginia; Dr. Pritam Singh, Ph.D., Texas; S. Surinder Singh,
California; Dr. Baljit S. Sidhu, MD, Virginia; S. Shamsher Singh Puri,
Georgia.

We are also indebted
to S. Charanjit Singh Anand of Massachusettes & S. Kirat Singh Sethi of New
York who provided valuable support and contact with S. Maninder Singh Sethi of
New York that led to the initial manufacture of stamped Gurbani-CDs.

Dr. Harbhajan Singh
Chawla, MD; of New Jersey provided many recordable CDs as well as $2500 for the
manufacture of professionally compressed Gurbani-CDs.

Dr. Jasbir Singh Mann,
MD from Orange County, California, USA, is very active in the Sikh community and
is involved in many activities in the promotion of Sikhism. He has also been
very helpful in the making and distribution of Gurbani-CDs.

Our thanks are due to
numerous other individuals (not listed here) who provided monetary or other help
in the manufacture and distribution of the Gurbani-CDs. Many of them have
provided support directly to the Sikh Center. We are very grateful for their
kindness.

All users of the
Gurbani-CD deserve our special thanks. It is mainly their enthusiasm and love
for learning from Gurbani that has made this project such a huge
success.